The Mist Returns

Lady Duchess Xena posted yesterday that Dea Mama should be coming home from the hospital this week. Very good news.

Friendly Fire was treating us to their weekly gig at Club Casa Blanco. My friend Misprint was there along with Tkid, Bill, MoonMaiden and many of the locals. Case and Mack dedicated the song "Glam Me A Beer!" to me for getting my CISSP. I hadn't heard them sing that one before; it was very touching. Case was getting emotional too, he was on a "every one of you is a precious snowflake" kick again; he must have used that phrase three or four times.

Jocelyn and Isobela showed up late, as did Hy. They missed most of a fantastic show. Friendly Fire sang their Pr0n song, and since Joce was there they did the Duck song too. I didn't see Willa there; and Ajay had to work, the poor dear.

After the show I chatted with people for a while and then went to NP and did a little Conga line dancing until DJ Anakin had to leave. Isobela has been thinking about a major redecorating project for her place, and was out shopping for stuff for that. When she got home I stopped by to visit and found that she had stepped next-door to visit with her neighbors.

Jer, Rainey and Mystic were out in their backyard/target practice area. Jer especially likes to blow shit up. He brought up a platoon of troop targets and invited Isobela and I to shoot. I took out my pistol and was going to town, but it was very slow against a whole platoon. Jer went into his vast armory and gave Isobela and I each a large assault rifle. It was much more efficient against the troops, and also against the trucks, tanks, helicopters and UPS Delivery van targets that he later brought up.

Jer then boarded his own helicopter and invited us to try and shoot him down. Isobela is a pretty good shot, but I think I had the shoot-move-shoot-move rhythm down better. Jer took a couple of dry runs at us to let us get used to it then came in on a live run. I thought I was doing a pretty good job of moving diagonally to his line of flight and avoiding his cannon fire, but then he let loose with a couple of rockets that had a huge blast radius and blew me thousands of feet into the air.

I thought this was a little unfair, so before I hit the ground I pulled out my hoverboard and slapped it on my feet. This kept me in the air and made me more maneuverable than he was. It took a couple of circuits around the area for me to find him again, and then I was on hit six like glue. Between Isobela's fire from the ground and mine from behind he was getting shredded. Right before he went down I was pretty close to him, so I'm not sure if it was our rifle fire or my hoverboard shredding his tail rotor that finally got him.

Next were some naval targets, and then bombers overhead. Jer was in a small hovercar-type thing to attack the boats with, and once we were done with targets he asked Isobela to try and shoot him down. I stepped back and let Isobela have her fun. I think Jer may have underestimated Iso, because before ya knew it he was walking away from burning wreckage. One thing I regret is that I was having so much fun the whole time that I forgot to take pictures!

By then it was late so we said our goodbyes with them, and then with each other. I was back at my place when I found out that Mama Kidd was back on Kidd Island! I zipped over to the Tavern in the Mist to look for her but she wasn't there; she was likely in the royal apartment wing of her castle from the looks of things. I chanced a phone call, and she was able to chat. I knew she was tired and very busy so the call was short. It was so good to hear her. The snow blanketing Kidd Island just got a whole lot brighter.